FIC: "The Soft Option (1/2)," Merlin/Arthur, NC-17
“Arthur,” Merlin said loudly, competing with the sounds of bad seventies pop music blasting from Arthur’s oversized speakers, “I don’t know if you were aware, but your inability to put away your toothbrush isn’t one of the endearing flaws that’s convinced me to live with you.”
“What?” Arthur shouted back, his voice distant and nearly drowned out by the sound of someone singing about piña coladas and inclement weather.
Merlin rubbed his temples. Between logging endless hours at the non-profit he claimed to work for and working an actual job, one that allowed him the luxury of things like toothbrushes, he was tired. And Arthur, despite his endless whinging about the trials of being the youngest VP in the history of Camelot Investments, was obviously getting enough sleep to be irritating well into the night.
“I said!” Merlin started, before turning on his heel and marching out of the bathroom and directly into-
Into Arthur. Suddenly, the music stopped, and Merlin wondered if he was the only one who heard his heart stop as well, then restart at an unnatural rate.
“You were saying?” Arthur said casually, catching Merlin’s wrist where it was lodged in his armpit, stereo controller still clutched in his other hand.
Merlin swallowed thickly and awaited the inevitable return of his thoughts. They seemed to have migrated somewhere south of his brain right around the time the rest of his blood did likewise.
“About my toothbrush,” Arthur encouraged with an annoyingly indulgent expression.
“Yes, and your shampoo and your aftershave and your-”
Arthur huffed.
“Something the matter, your highness?” Merlin chided, twisting his wrist out of Arthur’s grasp and edging around his-alright, impressive-frame, into the living room.
“I should have known you’d be an absolute nag to live with,” Arthur groaned, trailing after him.
“And I should have known you’d be too spoiled to pick up your own toiletries,” Merlin replied, collapsing onto the sofa in a tired heap. “Honestly, did none of your nannies teach you to clean up after yourself?”
“I thought country boys were supposed to have manners,” Arthur said, sprawling on the other end of the sofa with the enviable grace of someone with plenty of time to spend at the gym.
“Oh, here we go,” Merlin moaned, flinging an arm across his face to block out the sight of Arthur looking smug and well-rested. It wasn’t that he resented Arthur for being wealthy and almost illogically good looking, exactly. Most of the time the former didn’t register and the latter was just sort of an incentive for putting up with all the things about Arthur that were truly and spectacularly annoying, like his bizarre obsession with weaponry and his apparent lack of domestic skills.
“No, seriously, Merlin, what would Hunith say?” Arthur asked. Merlin didn’t need to look to know he was smiling.
“That you’re an arse,” Merlin muttered into his own arm.
Arthur snorted, and somehow it sounded haughty. “Your mother adores me. She’s invited me round for Christmas, you know.”
Merlin let his arm slide down his face enough to give Arthur a withering, if exhausted, glare. “This may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone is as in love with you as you are.”
“Jealousy doesn’t become you,” Arthur sighed.
“She’s my mother, Arthur. She still likes me better,” Merlin groaned.
“Well, I suppose someone has to,” Arthur conceded.
Merlin considered for a moment whether it was poor form to pass out on the sofa their first night sharing a flat, and he’d just about convinced himself that he was under no obligation to put out when he noticed Arthur flipping channels and giving Merlin an expectant look, though, fortunately, not his I’m Expecting Sex look.
“What?” Merlin asked tiredly.
Arthur shrugged without looking away from the screen.
It took a lot of effort on Merlin’s part not to literally groan, partly because it felt overdramatic, but mostly because it was something Arthur would do. If being Arthur’s friend and, at one point, his employee had taught Merlin anything, it was how to recognize a pout coming on, and this had the makings of an epic pout.
“Arthur, what are you doing?” Merlin said, scrubbing his face with the palm of his hand.
“I am watching telly,” Arthur said, maintaining a disturbing level of interest in the rerun of Doctor Who he’d settled on, made even more odd by the fact that Merlin was absolutely certain they’d watched it together the night before in this exact flat, when it had been Arthur’s and not theirs.
“Yes, I’d worked that much out for myself,” Merlin said, making a concerted effort to maintain vertical integrity long enough to unknot Arthur’s knickers. “But why are you doing it like you’re trying to bore a hole through Freema Agyeman’s head? Not that I object, mind you.”
Arthur chuckled evilly. “Don’t lie. She wore a lab coat one time, and you’ve been having filthy dreams about her ever since,” Arthur replied, sliding his eyes towards Merlin.
“I have not! Some of us don’t have career-based fetishes,” Merlin said, giving Arthur a loaded glance.
“It’s not a fetish. It’s hardly my fault I look damn good in a suit,” Arthur said, sounding far too confident for Merlin’s liking and forcing Merlin to relive possibly the most unsettling moment of his entire adulthood, which had involved walking in on Arthur and a secretary and one of Arthur’s painfully expensive ties being used in a manner Armani probably did not intend. It had been unsettling in several senses of the word.
Merlin chucked a pillow at his head.
“Hey! I thought you were so tired you could barely see straight,” Arthur said, making a feeble attempt at pinning Merlin’s arms to the sofa. It was obviously feeble because if he’d wanted to, Arthur could probably have taped Merlin to the ceiling without assistance.
“I’m rallying, as all great heroes must,” Merlin said, wiggling out of Arthur’s reach. Whatever dark cloud he’d seen pass over Arthur’s face a moment ago was gone, and Merlin was grateful in ways he knew he shouldn’t be.
That was sort of the problem, though, with moving in, with all of it. It wasn’t that Merlin minded living with Arthur, or in Arthur’s vicinity, or whatever they were calling it, it was just that he hadn’t had much of a choice. It felt… dangerous, some how. Whatever they were doing, this surreal dance that made Merlin feel giddy and alive and, at times, completely delusional, had tapped into a part of Merlin he didn’t usually acknowledge. The part of him that force-fed Arthur toast and tucked him into bed when he was well and truly pissed. The part that made sure Arthur remembered to go to the dentist and have his license renewed. The part of him that had a habit of subconsciously comparing his dates to Arthur, which in and of itself wasn’t so terrible, except that his dates never seemed to measure up.
The part that was totally and utterly fucked.
Arthur eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not staying up to humour me, are you?”
It took a moment for Merlin to work out what he was implying. “What? Wait, how am I…” And then Merlin noticed there was a bottle of champagne sitting forgotten on the table, and that Arthur was home on a Friday night instead of off doing whatever it was rich, pretty people did at the weekend. “Oh,” he said quietly, “We’re celebrating, aren’t we?” Merlin fought the urge to smack himself in the head. It was just so typically Arthur that Merlin couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be inappropriately pleased.
“Actually, so far, I’m drinking and you’re harassing me about my toothbrush. But we could be celebrating,” Arthur informed him.
“Me moving in? That warrants a bottle of champagne worth more that my life?” Merlin asked, a little bewildered, trying to repress the strange flush he so often got when Arthur did stupidly lovely things. Like buying him expensive champagne, or giving him a place to live without being asked, or, on one memorable occasion, threatening to skewer Merlin’s date with an antique sword if he got handsy-which, alright, had been more stupid than lovely at the time, but in retrospect was just Arthur’s slightly convoluted sense of chivalry, and therefore still rather sweet.
“Well, if it was worth less than your life, it would hardly be fit for human consumption,” Arthur said, pausing to take a sip straight from the bottle. “Stop being such a girl.”
“You’re the one who bought champagne,” Merlin said without much ire. “You do know I’m moving into your guest room, right? I’m not your live-in rentboy.”
Arthur chuckled. “Not yet,” he said, passing Merlin the bottle.
It took a good three seconds for Merlin’s brain to stop screaming oh god, what? and yes, yes, for god’s sake, let’s, simultaneously, and actually take the offered bottle, but he did, and with steady hands, he was pleased to note. After a long swig of champagne-taken from the bottle, because apparently real men had no need of glasses-Merlin settled in just in time to see some alien do something and then be defeated by the power of David Tennant’s charm. Arthur threw his arm across the back of the sofa, and if it felt like his fingers tangled in Merlin’s hair every now and again, it was probably Merlin’s overactive, overworked imagination.
*
The first thing Arthur realised upon waking was that he wasn’t in a bed. The second was that it was Saturday, which meant he could put off going into work to catch up on paperwork for as long as he bloody well pleased. His second thought was also his last thought for several blissful, unconscious hours.
The second time Arthur woke up, it was a lot less pleasant.
Something pointy had lodged itself in his ribcage, and there was definitely hair in his mouth, and it definitely wasn’t his.
Arthur opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to the ferocious sunlight streaming in through the blinds in his-in their living room. In his infinite wisdom, Arthur had purchased enough champagne to drown a small pony, or, alternately, leave Merlin passed out on his chest, fully clothed, snoring like a freight train, and drooling all over Arthur’s favourite shirt.
God, this was so not a precedent he’d been planning to set. He wiggled a little and realised Merlin’s weight had him trapped, pinned in such a way that there was no way of standing up without dumping Merlin onto the floor which, while appealing in theory, would only lead to a lot of yelling and possibly vomit on Merlin’s part.
“Fuck,” Arthur whispered, and then he went very still, because Merlin’s eyes were suddenly open, and Arthur had to wonder when he’d started ninja training to allow him to wake up without so much as moving.
“And good morning to you, too,” Merlin grunted out miserably. The effect was almost comical in conjunction with the way Merlin’s hair curled and stuck up all over his head, and the fact that he had creases across his cheek where he’d been resting against Arthur’s wrinkled shirt.
“You look wretched,” Arthur couldn’t help but point out.
“I look hung-over, you arse. And it’s your fault. Now, what have I said about you being a prat before my morning coffee?” Merlin said, making no effort to disentangle himself from Arthur’s limbs.
“If you don’t want to wake up to my charm, you shouldn’t pass out on my chest because you smelled alcohol,” Arthur said, trying not the think about how well their bodies fitted together, or how rumpled and vulnerable Merlin looked just then. God, it wasn’t like Arthur was some crazed sex-fiend or anything, regardless of what Merlin tended to imply, it was just that there was this thing that’d been going on for ages, quietly, blink and you’d miss it, but it was enough to drive Arthur out of his fucking skull. And now, Merlin was going to be living there, in Arthur’s flat all the time, and suddenly Arthur realised he’d made a tremendous logistical error, because there were two things he knew for bloody certain: one, he didn’t want to shag Merlin, because Merlin was his friend, and he wasn’t going to fuck that up for anything; two, he really wanted to shag Merlin.
Something in Arthur’s face must have given him away, because Merlin looked at him, frowned. “Oh god, you’re not going to throw up on me, are you?” he asked, without moving.
Arthur smiled. “If I did, it would only be in vengeance for New Years.”
For a moment, Merlin looked unconvinced. He peered down at Arthur, as if checking for signs of impending illness. Then, their eyes met, and Arthur stopped breathing because their faces were a lot closer than they had been a second ago and something had to happen soon or he was going to explode. Finally, Merlin let out a resigned huff and closed the gap between them.
Arthur’s entire body seized up like he’d been electrocuted. Merlin’s mouth was on him, biting at his lip and sucking and, Christ, that was his tongue and it was doing some pretty interesting things, things Arthur would never have thought clumsy, hopeless Merlin capable of, but still, his brain was going off like an air-raid siren. It wasn’t that he had any objection to doing stupid things with inappropriate people, as half the interns and two of the VPs at Camelot Investments would happily attest, he just preferred to do them while everyone involved was drunk enough that no one could be held responsible. And while he had to admit that this was better than a drunken tumble- all right, a lot better, and just what in the fucking fuck was Merlin doing with his mouth?- the downside was that Arthur was sober and so was Merlin, and it was morning, which was going to make waking up and pretending it never happened a lot trickier.
Merlin pulled away and frowned. “Alright, I’m going to interpret your lack of enthusiasm as surprise and not soul-crushing rejection, yeah?” he said calmly.
“Merlin…” Arthur attempted.
“Ok. Perhaps I’m being optimistic here,” Merlin said, pulling away and offering a half-hearted smile that utterly failed to reach his eyes.
Arthur sighed and was sort of shocked to realise his fingers were tangled in the hem of Merlin’s shirt. He let go, but there wasn’t enough space for two fully grown men to lay side by side on the sofa, no matter how large and comfortable it was, or how skinny Merlin was. This was despite Arthur’s best attempts at making sure he ate (usually in the form of lunch dates and take away curry consumed on the sofa in question). Their legs were tangled, and Merlin was still half on top of him, and the way Arthur’s arm was pinned beneath Merlin’s side was uncomfortable for everyone involved, but Arthur still sort of thought he wouldn’t mind staying exactly as they were, which was, come to mention it, exactly the problem.
“Perhaps you are,” he said quietly. Because really, how often did these things work out? Romance novels and soppy movies aside: just about never in Arthur’s experience.
Merlin jerked back abruptly, cold air rushing into the body-warm space he’d been occupying on Arthur’s chest. From the look on his face it was clear Merlin didn’t care for his answer. “Look, I’m going-going over to Gwen’s. See you later, yeah?” he said, standing up and grabbing his ridiculous messenger bag from the counter by the door where they had a tendency to shuck their things upon entering.
“Wait,” Arthur called after him, an inexplicable twinge of panic shooting through his gut without explanation.
Merlin turned to him, eyes wide and uncertain, one hand already on the door.
“Arthur?” he said quietly.
Suddenly, the room was very still and Arthur felt like he’d fallen into an alternate universe, where the stupid shit he said might actually matter. This made it a tremendous shame that he had absolutely no idea what to say. “It’s-” he tried, feeling completely inadequate without warning. He swallowed hard. “Don’t forget your new key,” he said softly.
Merlin blinked at him, and for a split-second, he looked almost disappointed, but in a flash it was gone. “Right,” he muttered, grabbing the key from the countertop, “Thanks.”
Before Arthur had a chance to regroup, the door slammed shut, and Arthur fell back against the sofa with miserable grunt.
*
Oddly enough, it took almost no time at all for things to go back to normal. Actually, if Arthur’s behaviour was any indication, there had never been anything abnormal about them in the first place, and there was no way in hell Merlin was going to be the one to scream there is there is you unbelievable idiot, no matter how badly he wanted to. He should have been accustomed to it by then, the mounting tension, the loaded glances, the complete and utter failure to launch.
In fact, Merlin had intended to point all of this out just as soon as he was finished telling Gwen so she could pet him and call him a moron and a man in her most soothing tones, but by the time he went home-and god, wasn’t that inconvenient-Arthur was making dinner with Merlin’s favourite Coltrane album playing in the background, eager to chat about football and stocks, and not the weird, annoying outbursts of homosexuality they appeared to trigger in one another. Hell, perhaps Merlin had finally cracked under the pressure of working two jobs and dealing with Arthur Pendragon, pratliest prat in all the land, and the whole thing had been a figment of his tired, over-sexed imagination.
Except, it hadn’t been. Because for all that they clearly Were Not Discussing It, Arthur hated jazz, and he was making (and ruining) Merlin’s favourite pasta.
Within a week, Merlin could almost pretend he didn’t remember the way Arthur’s fingers felt tangled in his shirt, or the hard warmth of his chest beneath Merlin’s own. After a month, he even regained the ability to brush past Arthur without getting an unbearable, near-instant hard-on.
They settled into a comfortable routine. Most mornings, they had breakfast. Merlin cooked eggs or bacon, sometimes both, while Arthur handled toast and juice - or, as Merlin put it, things that weren’t poisonous in the hands of helpless yuppies who didn’t know a wok from a wank. In the evenings, when Merlin wasn’t on call and Arthur didn’t work late, Merlin puttered around the kitchen, usually griping about their appalling lack of groceries, and emerge with some form of sustenance, which they ate in the living room while Merlin watched telly and Arthur read one of his frightening books about finance. Except for evenings Merlin came home tired (well, more so than usual) and cranky, then Arthur would disappear for a while and return bearing cartons of Chinese and, more often than not, a six-pack, and they’d spend the evening arguing over the last egg-roll, which inevitably devolved into chop-stick sword fights that Arthur always won.
It was a nice life, Merlin supposed, if only that.
*
Living with Merlin was a bit like having a maid with an attitude problem. For every home cooked meal Arthur got out of the arrangement, there was a scathing comment about Arthur’s dietary habits. For every freshly laundered shirt that appeared in Arthur’s closet as if by magic, he’d find one of his ratty old hoodies missing, only to discover it hanging off Merlin’s bony frame where he lay curled up and snoring on the sofa. They never discussed the rent, because it was distasteful, and every time Merlin brought it up, Arthur was forced to suffocate him with a pillow.
Everything was going well, considering, and Arthur knew he should just shut up and leave well enough alone, but sometimes… well, sometimes he had thoughts.
Like what life would be like if lazy nights in with Merlin were actually lazy nights in bed with Merlin. Like how it would feel to pin Merlin to the floor without the excuse of a lone egg-roll Arthur didn’t even want.
It was worse in the dark. Arthur would lie in bed and ponder the weight of Merlin’s legs draped over his shoulders, calculate how much of Merlin’s skinny waist he could span with his hands, picture how Merlin would look on his knobby knees in various locals, muse over whether Merlin would be loud and obscene or quiet and trembling beneath him, his skin white and infinite under Arthur’s mouth, sweating and panting Arthur’s name into the crook of his neck, while they-
And then there were the glances.
Sometimes, when he wasn’t trying, Arthur would catch Merlin just looking at him, like he was thinking the same stupid, impossible thoughts, like maybe Arthur was wrong to have dismissed the idea, because what’s a little fantastic, life-altering sex between friends?
Sometimes, Arthur could almost convince himself it was that simple.
*
It was a Friday, almost six months after Merlin had moved in, when everything came to a head.
“Merlin! Merlin, get up, oh my god, Merlin!”
Merlin, vaguely aware he was going to have to kill someone once he regained consciousness, rolled onto his stomach and pulled a pillow over his head.
“Merlin! Get. Up,” Arthur seemed to be saying rather emphatically and, much to Merlin’s dismay, close by.
“Nffmggk,” Merlin argued.
“I am so late I may as well just wait an hour and say I’m coming in early for tomorrow,” Arthur said, rummaging around in Merlin’s nightstand.
Merlin poked his head out from under his pillow. “What are you doing? That’s my drawer.”
Arthur ignored him and continued to riffle through Merlin’s things. After a few moments he paused, then began emptying the drawer’s contents onto Merlin’s bed. Merlin sat up and rubbed his eyes on the off chance that this was all some cruel dream-but of course Arthur was waking him up on his first day off in recent memory, because if Arthur had to be awake, why should anyone else be allowed to have a lie in?
“Ok, stop,” Merlin said, finding energy in his irritation as Arthur tossed Merlin’s condoms and-Christ-his lube onto Merlin’s legs. “Just, stop.”
Arthur pulled a face, but paused. “I need your razor.”
Merlin blinked at him. “What?” he asked incredulously.
“Your razor,” Arthur said slowly, as though speaking to someone with a mental deficiency, “I need it.”
Merlin rubbed his eyes again. “Why would I keep a razor by my bed?”
Arthur shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t in the bathroom.”
It took a lot of self-control on Merlin’s part to let slide the fact that Arthur had obviously been rummaging through his things for the better part of the morning, but he’d learned long ago that with Arthur, it was a matter of picking your battles. Whatever Merlin might have been angry about, Arthur was more or less guaranteed to do something even more infuriating in the near future.
“Weren’t you just going on about being late or something?” Merlin asked, on the off-chance that it might encourage Arthur to extricate himself from Merlin’s room in a timely fashion.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Yes. Because I can’t find my damn razor, and I can’t find your razor, and I look like a vagrant! Do you even listen?”
“I was asleep, how could I be expected to listen?”
Arthur made a frustrated sound and stormed out of the room, leaving Merlin in a pile of his own embarrassing possessions.
“A razor! Christ, my kingdom for a fucking razor,” Arthur shouted in the next room.
Resigning himself to the fact that sleep was probably not going to be an option until Arthur’s personal grooming was seen to, Merlin shucked his blankets and crawled out of bed, cursing his failure to suffocate Arthur in his sleep when he’d had the chance.
Judging by the clanging sounds, Arthur had resorted to digging through the kitchen cupboards, as though he might have confused his precious razor with a ramekin or some such. Merlin stumbled blearily into their shared bathroom, and briefly considered taking Arthur’s razor-which was sitting on the back of the toilet, of course-and disposing of it in some thoroughly violent manner, possibly involving a bodily orifice of Arthur’s to be chosen at random. Rejecting the idea only because it would involve a lot of oozing and not a lot of sleeping, Merlin walked into the kitchen where Arthur was staring accusingly at a perfectly innocent loaf of bread, as though it might be harbouring his fugitive toiletry. Merlin held up the prodigal razor.
“Did you hide it?” Arthur asked in all seriousness, snatching it from Merlin’s outstretched hand.
“Why would I hide it? Believe it or not, I have no particular investment in the texture of your face. It was on the toilet, in case you were wondering,” Merlin said, following Arthur into the bathroom.
“I didn’t put it there,” Arthur grumbled, sounding less than confident.
“Right. The Shaving Gnomes must have come for it in the night and shifted it a halfway across the bathroom, the bastards,” said Merlin.
“Could you not be so damn cheeky this early in the morning?” Arthur snapped, lathering the lower half of his face rather aggressively.
Merlin gave a sarcastic chuckle. “I can refrain, yes. Particularly when I’m sleeping. You know, as I like to do when it’s my first day off in two bloody weeks,” he spat irritably.
Arthur half-rolled his eyes, too focused on shaving to fully commit. “I’m sorry, I know how dreadfully taxing it can be, saving baby whales or unwed mothers-whatever it is you do with those beatniks.”
Merlin watched in the mirror as his own cheeks went pink, and reminded himself of all the unpleasant clean-up murdering Arthur would entail.
“Not everyone can be paid to shag their secretary all day,” Merlin said, keeping his voice as level as possible.
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “You’re just jealous I never shagged you when you had the job,” Arthur said flippantly.
Merlin felt his eyes widen.
This was one of the central problems with Arthur as a person: he was very Important. So much so that it was impossible to deny it, even in anger, even for the sake of argument. Arthur Pendragon, heir to the Pendragon fortune, heir apparent to Uther Pendragon’s corporate stronghold, Camelot Investments, was, undoubtedly, Important. What was irritating was that it gave Arthur the impression that anyone or anything not important in the way he was Important was therefore Not Important. Merlin had begun attempting to beat this delusion out of Arthur roughly fifteen seconds after they met, and he’d achieved some measure of success, but every now and then Arthur, apparently, felt the insatiable urge to remind Merlin and anyone else in the vicinity that he was, first and foremost, an insufferable berk.
“And it’s the environment. I’m working to protect the environment. You know, glaciers and things?” Merlin said.
“Right. Ice. Very controversial, ice,” Arthur said, no longer really listening to what he was saying.
Merlin opened his mouth to protest that yes, actually, global warming was pretty controversial, but it was obvious Arthur’s attention lay with his own face and not Merlin’s life’s work. Typical.
“Weren’t you saying something about being ‘oh god so unforgivably late,’ or something?” Merlin asked, passing Arthur a towel automatically when he held out his hand. Certain aspects of being Arthur’s one-time personal assistant were difficult to shake.
Arthur let out a long-suffering sigh. “We’ve been over this. Because I couldn’t find my razor. Or your razor. Where is your razor, by the way?”
“It broke two days ago, can’t you tell?” Merlin examined his chin in the mirror and realised that sadly, you couldn’t much tell. “I haven’t bought another yet because this is the first time in recent memory I haven’t been at work or asleep. More the former than the latter,” Merlin said, rubbing his eyes again involuntarily.
Arthur at last had the good grace to look slightly contrite. “Right.”
“And anyway,” Merlin continued, pleased with receiving what qualified as an apology coming from Arthur, “since when does shaving your blond, completely invisible stubble rank higher than maintaining your perfect record for punctuality? Your father won’t be happy.”
Arthur paused long enough to shoot Merlin a glare. “My father isn’t giving a presentation in front of the entire board about why he should be allowed to take over the company next year.”
Merlin grimaced. He had forgotten. He knew, vaguely, that Arthur had been gone a lot more than usual, but Merlin hadn’t been around much, either. He’d been making a concerted effort to get out more, encouraged by Gwen’s constant nagging that if he didn’t put himself ‘out there’ (wherever the hell that was) while he was young and pretty, he was going to end up shrivelled and alone, having it off over pictures of strapping young blondes and the skinny men who loved them. Perhaps it was a good sign that something so hugely important in Arthur’s life had barely registered, but mostly, Merlin just felt guilty.
“I still don’t understand why the board has to approve it. I thought when Uther stepped down you just sort of inherited the throne.” Arthur glared at him again, this time in the mirror. “No?”
“Camelot Investments is not a monarchy, Merlin, and even if it was, my father wouldn’t let me anywhere near his precious company without completing some sort of hero’s quest to prove my dedication first,” Arthur said, sounding like someone who had accepted an unpleasant reality a long time ago and could nearly talk about it without a note of bitterness. “There would almost certainly be dragons involved.”
“Well, I’m sure it doesn’t matter. Who else would they have in charge, Gawain?”
Arthur snorted. “Not likely. But they could vote to sell off the company’s assets to its competitors if they don’t think I’m up to the job,” Arthur said calmly.
Merlin nodded. For all that he complained about it, and he did, at exhaustive length, Camelot Investments meant the world to Arthur. Even Merlin, crusader for the little guy and all around anti-corporate bleeding-heart, couldn’t begrudge Arthur his success. Arthur was always the first person at the office and, more often than not, the last to leave. For him, it was about more than profit margins and stock prices. It was about his father, who cobbled the whole operation together out of warring companies, who looked to Arthur to carry on his legacy and uphold everything he had built. It was about every last employee whose salary depended on Arthur’s ability to convince a boardroom full of cutthroat, well-moneyed men that he was worthy of their confidence. For Arthur, it was a matter of honour.
“I don’t see how anyone wouldn’t want you running their company,” Merlin said.
Arthur laughed humourlessly. “Yes, well, no offence-” A sure sign Arthur was about to say something truly horrifying “-but you and your co-workers wear matching t-shirts. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust your business savvy.”
“It’s a non-profit. And the shirts aren’t mandatory. But you’re missing the point,” Merlin said, trailing after Arthur as he went into his own room and stripped off his pyjama shirt. Without much warning, Merlin’s point made itself scarce, the way Merlin’s points often did when ‘Arthur’ and ‘unexpected nudity’ intersected. Even after months in suffocating proximity, the way Arthur’s skin rippled when the smooth muscles of his back tightened never ceased to make Merlin’s breath catch just a little.
“What is the point then?” Arthur supplied, oblivious as always to the effect he was having on Merlin’s breath and, yes, alright, other parts of his person.
Merlin shook his head. “The point is it’s not always about business, Arthur. The board is going to vote for you because you’re you, and anyone with half a brain can see you were born to run that company.”
Arthur shrugged on a perfectly pressed dress shirt and toed on his shiniest leather wingtips.
“We’ll see,” Arthur said, and sprinted out the door, snatching his briefcase from the kitchen counter along the way.
Merlin sighed and sat down on Arthur’s bed. There was, theoretically, nothing to prevent Merlin from going back to sleep. It wasn’t his life-altering meeting, after all, and just because Arthur’s entire future depended on the events of the next few hours didn’t mean Merlin should lose sleep over it.
Except, of course, that he couldn’t sleep.
Something nervous and uncomfortable bubbled beneath Merlin’s skin as he imagined Arthur walking into that big, echoing board room and trying to convince a bunch of trust-fund babies and stodgy old men of what Merlin already knew: that Arthur was, despite being spoilt and moody and a complete sod at times, the most qualified man on the planet to steer Camelot Investments into the future.
And, judging by the overstuffed folder on Arthur’s bureau, he’d forgotten the quarterly earnings reports he was due to present in just over an hour, each annotated in Arthur’s tight, meticulous scrawl.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding,” Merlin said to no one in particular.
For about three seconds, he wished he could un-see the folder altogether, but then he thought of Arthur, anxious, brave Arthur, with his armour of Anderson & Sheppard suits and his utter inability to admit defeat, charging into the boardroom without his meticulously prepared handouts and-well, obviously Merlin was going to break his skinny neck to keep that from happening. It was what he did, after all, what he’d been doing since twenty minutes after they first met, when Arthur, in his enthusiasm for telling Merlin what a moron he was, failed to notice a bloody crane swinging towards him, and Merlin had thrown him out of the way without thinking. What mattered was that Arthur did courageous, stupid things, and Merlin saved his well-formed arse.
( Part 2 )
“What?” Arthur shouted back, his voice distant and nearly drowned out by the sound of someone singing about piña coladas and inclement weather.
Merlin rubbed his temples. Between logging endless hours at the non-profit he claimed to work for and working an actual job, one that allowed him the luxury of things like toothbrushes, he was tired. And Arthur, despite his endless whinging about the trials of being the youngest VP in the history of Camelot Investments, was obviously getting enough sleep to be irritating well into the night.
“I said!” Merlin started, before turning on his heel and marching out of the bathroom and directly into-
Into Arthur. Suddenly, the music stopped, and Merlin wondered if he was the only one who heard his heart stop as well, then restart at an unnatural rate.
“You were saying?” Arthur said casually, catching Merlin’s wrist where it was lodged in his armpit, stereo controller still clutched in his other hand.
Merlin swallowed thickly and awaited the inevitable return of his thoughts. They seemed to have migrated somewhere south of his brain right around the time the rest of his blood did likewise.
“About my toothbrush,” Arthur encouraged with an annoyingly indulgent expression.
“Yes, and your shampoo and your aftershave and your-”
Arthur huffed.
“Something the matter, your highness?” Merlin chided, twisting his wrist out of Arthur’s grasp and edging around his-alright, impressive-frame, into the living room.
“I should have known you’d be an absolute nag to live with,” Arthur groaned, trailing after him.
“And I should have known you’d be too spoiled to pick up your own toiletries,” Merlin replied, collapsing onto the sofa in a tired heap. “Honestly, did none of your nannies teach you to clean up after yourself?”
“I thought country boys were supposed to have manners,” Arthur said, sprawling on the other end of the sofa with the enviable grace of someone with plenty of time to spend at the gym.
“Oh, here we go,” Merlin moaned, flinging an arm across his face to block out the sight of Arthur looking smug and well-rested. It wasn’t that he resented Arthur for being wealthy and almost illogically good looking, exactly. Most of the time the former didn’t register and the latter was just sort of an incentive for putting up with all the things about Arthur that were truly and spectacularly annoying, like his bizarre obsession with weaponry and his apparent lack of domestic skills.
“No, seriously, Merlin, what would Hunith say?” Arthur asked. Merlin didn’t need to look to know he was smiling.
“That you’re an arse,” Merlin muttered into his own arm.
Arthur snorted, and somehow it sounded haughty. “Your mother adores me. She’s invited me round for Christmas, you know.”
Merlin let his arm slide down his face enough to give Arthur a withering, if exhausted, glare. “This may come as a surprise to you, but not everyone is as in love with you as you are.”
“Jealousy doesn’t become you,” Arthur sighed.
“She’s my mother, Arthur. She still likes me better,” Merlin groaned.
“Well, I suppose someone has to,” Arthur conceded.
Merlin considered for a moment whether it was poor form to pass out on the sofa their first night sharing a flat, and he’d just about convinced himself that he was under no obligation to put out when he noticed Arthur flipping channels and giving Merlin an expectant look, though, fortunately, not his I’m Expecting Sex look.
“What?” Merlin asked tiredly.
Arthur shrugged without looking away from the screen.
It took a lot of effort on Merlin’s part not to literally groan, partly because it felt overdramatic, but mostly because it was something Arthur would do. If being Arthur’s friend and, at one point, his employee had taught Merlin anything, it was how to recognize a pout coming on, and this had the makings of an epic pout.
“Arthur, what are you doing?” Merlin said, scrubbing his face with the palm of his hand.
“I am watching telly,” Arthur said, maintaining a disturbing level of interest in the rerun of Doctor Who he’d settled on, made even more odd by the fact that Merlin was absolutely certain they’d watched it together the night before in this exact flat, when it had been Arthur’s and not theirs.
“Yes, I’d worked that much out for myself,” Merlin said, making a concerted effort to maintain vertical integrity long enough to unknot Arthur’s knickers. “But why are you doing it like you’re trying to bore a hole through Freema Agyeman’s head? Not that I object, mind you.”
Arthur chuckled evilly. “Don’t lie. She wore a lab coat one time, and you’ve been having filthy dreams about her ever since,” Arthur replied, sliding his eyes towards Merlin.
“I have not! Some of us don’t have career-based fetishes,” Merlin said, giving Arthur a loaded glance.
“It’s not a fetish. It’s hardly my fault I look damn good in a suit,” Arthur said, sounding far too confident for Merlin’s liking and forcing Merlin to relive possibly the most unsettling moment of his entire adulthood, which had involved walking in on Arthur and a secretary and one of Arthur’s painfully expensive ties being used in a manner Armani probably did not intend. It had been unsettling in several senses of the word.
Merlin chucked a pillow at his head.
“Hey! I thought you were so tired you could barely see straight,” Arthur said, making a feeble attempt at pinning Merlin’s arms to the sofa. It was obviously feeble because if he’d wanted to, Arthur could probably have taped Merlin to the ceiling without assistance.
“I’m rallying, as all great heroes must,” Merlin said, wiggling out of Arthur’s reach. Whatever dark cloud he’d seen pass over Arthur’s face a moment ago was gone, and Merlin was grateful in ways he knew he shouldn’t be.
That was sort of the problem, though, with moving in, with all of it. It wasn’t that Merlin minded living with Arthur, or in Arthur’s vicinity, or whatever they were calling it, it was just that he hadn’t had much of a choice. It felt… dangerous, some how. Whatever they were doing, this surreal dance that made Merlin feel giddy and alive and, at times, completely delusional, had tapped into a part of Merlin he didn’t usually acknowledge. The part of him that force-fed Arthur toast and tucked him into bed when he was well and truly pissed. The part that made sure Arthur remembered to go to the dentist and have his license renewed. The part of him that had a habit of subconsciously comparing his dates to Arthur, which in and of itself wasn’t so terrible, except that his dates never seemed to measure up.
The part that was totally and utterly fucked.
Arthur eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not staying up to humour me, are you?”
It took a moment for Merlin to work out what he was implying. “What? Wait, how am I…” And then Merlin noticed there was a bottle of champagne sitting forgotten on the table, and that Arthur was home on a Friday night instead of off doing whatever it was rich, pretty people did at the weekend. “Oh,” he said quietly, “We’re celebrating, aren’t we?” Merlin fought the urge to smack himself in the head. It was just so typically Arthur that Merlin couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be inappropriately pleased.
“Actually, so far, I’m drinking and you’re harassing me about my toothbrush. But we could be celebrating,” Arthur informed him.
“Me moving in? That warrants a bottle of champagne worth more that my life?” Merlin asked, a little bewildered, trying to repress the strange flush he so often got when Arthur did stupidly lovely things. Like buying him expensive champagne, or giving him a place to live without being asked, or, on one memorable occasion, threatening to skewer Merlin’s date with an antique sword if he got handsy-which, alright, had been more stupid than lovely at the time, but in retrospect was just Arthur’s slightly convoluted sense of chivalry, and therefore still rather sweet.
“Well, if it was worth less than your life, it would hardly be fit for human consumption,” Arthur said, pausing to take a sip straight from the bottle. “Stop being such a girl.”
“You’re the one who bought champagne,” Merlin said without much ire. “You do know I’m moving into your guest room, right? I’m not your live-in rentboy.”
Arthur chuckled. “Not yet,” he said, passing Merlin the bottle.
It took a good three seconds for Merlin’s brain to stop screaming oh god, what? and yes, yes, for god’s sake, let’s, simultaneously, and actually take the offered bottle, but he did, and with steady hands, he was pleased to note. After a long swig of champagne-taken from the bottle, because apparently real men had no need of glasses-Merlin settled in just in time to see some alien do something and then be defeated by the power of David Tennant’s charm. Arthur threw his arm across the back of the sofa, and if it felt like his fingers tangled in Merlin’s hair every now and again, it was probably Merlin’s overactive, overworked imagination.
*
The first thing Arthur realised upon waking was that he wasn’t in a bed. The second was that it was Saturday, which meant he could put off going into work to catch up on paperwork for as long as he bloody well pleased. His second thought was also his last thought for several blissful, unconscious hours.
The second time Arthur woke up, it was a lot less pleasant.
Something pointy had lodged itself in his ribcage, and there was definitely hair in his mouth, and it definitely wasn’t his.
Arthur opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to the ferocious sunlight streaming in through the blinds in his-in their living room. In his infinite wisdom, Arthur had purchased enough champagne to drown a small pony, or, alternately, leave Merlin passed out on his chest, fully clothed, snoring like a freight train, and drooling all over Arthur’s favourite shirt.
God, this was so not a precedent he’d been planning to set. He wiggled a little and realised Merlin’s weight had him trapped, pinned in such a way that there was no way of standing up without dumping Merlin onto the floor which, while appealing in theory, would only lead to a lot of yelling and possibly vomit on Merlin’s part.
“Fuck,” Arthur whispered, and then he went very still, because Merlin’s eyes were suddenly open, and Arthur had to wonder when he’d started ninja training to allow him to wake up without so much as moving.
“And good morning to you, too,” Merlin grunted out miserably. The effect was almost comical in conjunction with the way Merlin’s hair curled and stuck up all over his head, and the fact that he had creases across his cheek where he’d been resting against Arthur’s wrinkled shirt.
“You look wretched,” Arthur couldn’t help but point out.
“I look hung-over, you arse. And it’s your fault. Now, what have I said about you being a prat before my morning coffee?” Merlin said, making no effort to disentangle himself from Arthur’s limbs.
“If you don’t want to wake up to my charm, you shouldn’t pass out on my chest because you smelled alcohol,” Arthur said, trying not the think about how well their bodies fitted together, or how rumpled and vulnerable Merlin looked just then. God, it wasn’t like Arthur was some crazed sex-fiend or anything, regardless of what Merlin tended to imply, it was just that there was this thing that’d been going on for ages, quietly, blink and you’d miss it, but it was enough to drive Arthur out of his fucking skull. And now, Merlin was going to be living there, in Arthur’s flat all the time, and suddenly Arthur realised he’d made a tremendous logistical error, because there were two things he knew for bloody certain: one, he didn’t want to shag Merlin, because Merlin was his friend, and he wasn’t going to fuck that up for anything; two, he really wanted to shag Merlin.
Something in Arthur’s face must have given him away, because Merlin looked at him, frowned. “Oh god, you’re not going to throw up on me, are you?” he asked, without moving.
Arthur smiled. “If I did, it would only be in vengeance for New Years.”
For a moment, Merlin looked unconvinced. He peered down at Arthur, as if checking for signs of impending illness. Then, their eyes met, and Arthur stopped breathing because their faces were a lot closer than they had been a second ago and something had to happen soon or he was going to explode. Finally, Merlin let out a resigned huff and closed the gap between them.
Arthur’s entire body seized up like he’d been electrocuted. Merlin’s mouth was on him, biting at his lip and sucking and, Christ, that was his tongue and it was doing some pretty interesting things, things Arthur would never have thought clumsy, hopeless Merlin capable of, but still, his brain was going off like an air-raid siren. It wasn’t that he had any objection to doing stupid things with inappropriate people, as half the interns and two of the VPs at Camelot Investments would happily attest, he just preferred to do them while everyone involved was drunk enough that no one could be held responsible. And while he had to admit that this was better than a drunken tumble- all right, a lot better, and just what in the fucking fuck was Merlin doing with his mouth?- the downside was that Arthur was sober and so was Merlin, and it was morning, which was going to make waking up and pretending it never happened a lot trickier.
Merlin pulled away and frowned. “Alright, I’m going to interpret your lack of enthusiasm as surprise and not soul-crushing rejection, yeah?” he said calmly.
“Merlin…” Arthur attempted.
“Ok. Perhaps I’m being optimistic here,” Merlin said, pulling away and offering a half-hearted smile that utterly failed to reach his eyes.
Arthur sighed and was sort of shocked to realise his fingers were tangled in the hem of Merlin’s shirt. He let go, but there wasn’t enough space for two fully grown men to lay side by side on the sofa, no matter how large and comfortable it was, or how skinny Merlin was. This was despite Arthur’s best attempts at making sure he ate (usually in the form of lunch dates and take away curry consumed on the sofa in question). Their legs were tangled, and Merlin was still half on top of him, and the way Arthur’s arm was pinned beneath Merlin’s side was uncomfortable for everyone involved, but Arthur still sort of thought he wouldn’t mind staying exactly as they were, which was, come to mention it, exactly the problem.
“Perhaps you are,” he said quietly. Because really, how often did these things work out? Romance novels and soppy movies aside: just about never in Arthur’s experience.
Merlin jerked back abruptly, cold air rushing into the body-warm space he’d been occupying on Arthur’s chest. From the look on his face it was clear Merlin didn’t care for his answer. “Look, I’m going-going over to Gwen’s. See you later, yeah?” he said, standing up and grabbing his ridiculous messenger bag from the counter by the door where they had a tendency to shuck their things upon entering.
“Wait,” Arthur called after him, an inexplicable twinge of panic shooting through his gut without explanation.
Merlin turned to him, eyes wide and uncertain, one hand already on the door.
“Arthur?” he said quietly.
Suddenly, the room was very still and Arthur felt like he’d fallen into an alternate universe, where the stupid shit he said might actually matter. This made it a tremendous shame that he had absolutely no idea what to say. “It’s-” he tried, feeling completely inadequate without warning. He swallowed hard. “Don’t forget your new key,” he said softly.
Merlin blinked at him, and for a split-second, he looked almost disappointed, but in a flash it was gone. “Right,” he muttered, grabbing the key from the countertop, “Thanks.”
Before Arthur had a chance to regroup, the door slammed shut, and Arthur fell back against the sofa with miserable grunt.
*
Oddly enough, it took almost no time at all for things to go back to normal. Actually, if Arthur’s behaviour was any indication, there had never been anything abnormal about them in the first place, and there was no way in hell Merlin was going to be the one to scream there is there is you unbelievable idiot, no matter how badly he wanted to. He should have been accustomed to it by then, the mounting tension, the loaded glances, the complete and utter failure to launch.
In fact, Merlin had intended to point all of this out just as soon as he was finished telling Gwen so she could pet him and call him a moron and a man in her most soothing tones, but by the time he went home-and god, wasn’t that inconvenient-Arthur was making dinner with Merlin’s favourite Coltrane album playing in the background, eager to chat about football and stocks, and not the weird, annoying outbursts of homosexuality they appeared to trigger in one another. Hell, perhaps Merlin had finally cracked under the pressure of working two jobs and dealing with Arthur Pendragon, pratliest prat in all the land, and the whole thing had been a figment of his tired, over-sexed imagination.
Except, it hadn’t been. Because for all that they clearly Were Not Discussing It, Arthur hated jazz, and he was making (and ruining) Merlin’s favourite pasta.
Within a week, Merlin could almost pretend he didn’t remember the way Arthur’s fingers felt tangled in his shirt, or the hard warmth of his chest beneath Merlin’s own. After a month, he even regained the ability to brush past Arthur without getting an unbearable, near-instant hard-on.
They settled into a comfortable routine. Most mornings, they had breakfast. Merlin cooked eggs or bacon, sometimes both, while Arthur handled toast and juice - or, as Merlin put it, things that weren’t poisonous in the hands of helpless yuppies who didn’t know a wok from a wank. In the evenings, when Merlin wasn’t on call and Arthur didn’t work late, Merlin puttered around the kitchen, usually griping about their appalling lack of groceries, and emerge with some form of sustenance, which they ate in the living room while Merlin watched telly and Arthur read one of his frightening books about finance. Except for evenings Merlin came home tired (well, more so than usual) and cranky, then Arthur would disappear for a while and return bearing cartons of Chinese and, more often than not, a six-pack, and they’d spend the evening arguing over the last egg-roll, which inevitably devolved into chop-stick sword fights that Arthur always won.
It was a nice life, Merlin supposed, if only that.
*
Living with Merlin was a bit like having a maid with an attitude problem. For every home cooked meal Arthur got out of the arrangement, there was a scathing comment about Arthur’s dietary habits. For every freshly laundered shirt that appeared in Arthur’s closet as if by magic, he’d find one of his ratty old hoodies missing, only to discover it hanging off Merlin’s bony frame where he lay curled up and snoring on the sofa. They never discussed the rent, because it was distasteful, and every time Merlin brought it up, Arthur was forced to suffocate him with a pillow.
Everything was going well, considering, and Arthur knew he should just shut up and leave well enough alone, but sometimes… well, sometimes he had thoughts.
Like what life would be like if lazy nights in with Merlin were actually lazy nights in bed with Merlin. Like how it would feel to pin Merlin to the floor without the excuse of a lone egg-roll Arthur didn’t even want.
It was worse in the dark. Arthur would lie in bed and ponder the weight of Merlin’s legs draped over his shoulders, calculate how much of Merlin’s skinny waist he could span with his hands, picture how Merlin would look on his knobby knees in various locals, muse over whether Merlin would be loud and obscene or quiet and trembling beneath him, his skin white and infinite under Arthur’s mouth, sweating and panting Arthur’s name into the crook of his neck, while they-
And then there were the glances.
Sometimes, when he wasn’t trying, Arthur would catch Merlin just looking at him, like he was thinking the same stupid, impossible thoughts, like maybe Arthur was wrong to have dismissed the idea, because what’s a little fantastic, life-altering sex between friends?
Sometimes, Arthur could almost convince himself it was that simple.
*
It was a Friday, almost six months after Merlin had moved in, when everything came to a head.
“Merlin! Merlin, get up, oh my god, Merlin!”
Merlin, vaguely aware he was going to have to kill someone once he regained consciousness, rolled onto his stomach and pulled a pillow over his head.
“Merlin! Get. Up,” Arthur seemed to be saying rather emphatically and, much to Merlin’s dismay, close by.
“Nffmggk,” Merlin argued.
“I am so late I may as well just wait an hour and say I’m coming in early for tomorrow,” Arthur said, rummaging around in Merlin’s nightstand.
Merlin poked his head out from under his pillow. “What are you doing? That’s my drawer.”
Arthur ignored him and continued to riffle through Merlin’s things. After a few moments he paused, then began emptying the drawer’s contents onto Merlin’s bed. Merlin sat up and rubbed his eyes on the off chance that this was all some cruel dream-but of course Arthur was waking him up on his first day off in recent memory, because if Arthur had to be awake, why should anyone else be allowed to have a lie in?
“Ok, stop,” Merlin said, finding energy in his irritation as Arthur tossed Merlin’s condoms and-Christ-his lube onto Merlin’s legs. “Just, stop.”
Arthur pulled a face, but paused. “I need your razor.”
Merlin blinked at him. “What?” he asked incredulously.
“Your razor,” Arthur said slowly, as though speaking to someone with a mental deficiency, “I need it.”
Merlin rubbed his eyes again. “Why would I keep a razor by my bed?”
Arthur shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t in the bathroom.”
It took a lot of self-control on Merlin’s part to let slide the fact that Arthur had obviously been rummaging through his things for the better part of the morning, but he’d learned long ago that with Arthur, it was a matter of picking your battles. Whatever Merlin might have been angry about, Arthur was more or less guaranteed to do something even more infuriating in the near future.
“Weren’t you just going on about being late or something?” Merlin asked, on the off-chance that it might encourage Arthur to extricate himself from Merlin’s room in a timely fashion.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Yes. Because I can’t find my damn razor, and I can’t find your razor, and I look like a vagrant! Do you even listen?”
“I was asleep, how could I be expected to listen?”
Arthur made a frustrated sound and stormed out of the room, leaving Merlin in a pile of his own embarrassing possessions.
“A razor! Christ, my kingdom for a fucking razor,” Arthur shouted in the next room.
Resigning himself to the fact that sleep was probably not going to be an option until Arthur’s personal grooming was seen to, Merlin shucked his blankets and crawled out of bed, cursing his failure to suffocate Arthur in his sleep when he’d had the chance.
Judging by the clanging sounds, Arthur had resorted to digging through the kitchen cupboards, as though he might have confused his precious razor with a ramekin or some such. Merlin stumbled blearily into their shared bathroom, and briefly considered taking Arthur’s razor-which was sitting on the back of the toilet, of course-and disposing of it in some thoroughly violent manner, possibly involving a bodily orifice of Arthur’s to be chosen at random. Rejecting the idea only because it would involve a lot of oozing and not a lot of sleeping, Merlin walked into the kitchen where Arthur was staring accusingly at a perfectly innocent loaf of bread, as though it might be harbouring his fugitive toiletry. Merlin held up the prodigal razor.
“Did you hide it?” Arthur asked in all seriousness, snatching it from Merlin’s outstretched hand.
“Why would I hide it? Believe it or not, I have no particular investment in the texture of your face. It was on the toilet, in case you were wondering,” Merlin said, following Arthur into the bathroom.
“I didn’t put it there,” Arthur grumbled, sounding less than confident.
“Right. The Shaving Gnomes must have come for it in the night and shifted it a halfway across the bathroom, the bastards,” said Merlin.
“Could you not be so damn cheeky this early in the morning?” Arthur snapped, lathering the lower half of his face rather aggressively.
Merlin gave a sarcastic chuckle. “I can refrain, yes. Particularly when I’m sleeping. You know, as I like to do when it’s my first day off in two bloody weeks,” he spat irritably.
Arthur half-rolled his eyes, too focused on shaving to fully commit. “I’m sorry, I know how dreadfully taxing it can be, saving baby whales or unwed mothers-whatever it is you do with those beatniks.”
Merlin watched in the mirror as his own cheeks went pink, and reminded himself of all the unpleasant clean-up murdering Arthur would entail.
“Not everyone can be paid to shag their secretary all day,” Merlin said, keeping his voice as level as possible.
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “You’re just jealous I never shagged you when you had the job,” Arthur said flippantly.
Merlin felt his eyes widen.
This was one of the central problems with Arthur as a person: he was very Important. So much so that it was impossible to deny it, even in anger, even for the sake of argument. Arthur Pendragon, heir to the Pendragon fortune, heir apparent to Uther Pendragon’s corporate stronghold, Camelot Investments, was, undoubtedly, Important. What was irritating was that it gave Arthur the impression that anyone or anything not important in the way he was Important was therefore Not Important. Merlin had begun attempting to beat this delusion out of Arthur roughly fifteen seconds after they met, and he’d achieved some measure of success, but every now and then Arthur, apparently, felt the insatiable urge to remind Merlin and anyone else in the vicinity that he was, first and foremost, an insufferable berk.
“And it’s the environment. I’m working to protect the environment. You know, glaciers and things?” Merlin said.
“Right. Ice. Very controversial, ice,” Arthur said, no longer really listening to what he was saying.
Merlin opened his mouth to protest that yes, actually, global warming was pretty controversial, but it was obvious Arthur’s attention lay with his own face and not Merlin’s life’s work. Typical.
“Weren’t you saying something about being ‘oh god so unforgivably late,’ or something?” Merlin asked, passing Arthur a towel automatically when he held out his hand. Certain aspects of being Arthur’s one-time personal assistant were difficult to shake.
Arthur let out a long-suffering sigh. “We’ve been over this. Because I couldn’t find my razor. Or your razor. Where is your razor, by the way?”
“It broke two days ago, can’t you tell?” Merlin examined his chin in the mirror and realised that sadly, you couldn’t much tell. “I haven’t bought another yet because this is the first time in recent memory I haven’t been at work or asleep. More the former than the latter,” Merlin said, rubbing his eyes again involuntarily.
Arthur at last had the good grace to look slightly contrite. “Right.”
“And anyway,” Merlin continued, pleased with receiving what qualified as an apology coming from Arthur, “since when does shaving your blond, completely invisible stubble rank higher than maintaining your perfect record for punctuality? Your father won’t be happy.”
Arthur paused long enough to shoot Merlin a glare. “My father isn’t giving a presentation in front of the entire board about why he should be allowed to take over the company next year.”
Merlin grimaced. He had forgotten. He knew, vaguely, that Arthur had been gone a lot more than usual, but Merlin hadn’t been around much, either. He’d been making a concerted effort to get out more, encouraged by Gwen’s constant nagging that if he didn’t put himself ‘out there’ (wherever the hell that was) while he was young and pretty, he was going to end up shrivelled and alone, having it off over pictures of strapping young blondes and the skinny men who loved them. Perhaps it was a good sign that something so hugely important in Arthur’s life had barely registered, but mostly, Merlin just felt guilty.
“I still don’t understand why the board has to approve it. I thought when Uther stepped down you just sort of inherited the throne.” Arthur glared at him again, this time in the mirror. “No?”
“Camelot Investments is not a monarchy, Merlin, and even if it was, my father wouldn’t let me anywhere near his precious company without completing some sort of hero’s quest to prove my dedication first,” Arthur said, sounding like someone who had accepted an unpleasant reality a long time ago and could nearly talk about it without a note of bitterness. “There would almost certainly be dragons involved.”
“Well, I’m sure it doesn’t matter. Who else would they have in charge, Gawain?”
Arthur snorted. “Not likely. But they could vote to sell off the company’s assets to its competitors if they don’t think I’m up to the job,” Arthur said calmly.
Merlin nodded. For all that he complained about it, and he did, at exhaustive length, Camelot Investments meant the world to Arthur. Even Merlin, crusader for the little guy and all around anti-corporate bleeding-heart, couldn’t begrudge Arthur his success. Arthur was always the first person at the office and, more often than not, the last to leave. For him, it was about more than profit margins and stock prices. It was about his father, who cobbled the whole operation together out of warring companies, who looked to Arthur to carry on his legacy and uphold everything he had built. It was about every last employee whose salary depended on Arthur’s ability to convince a boardroom full of cutthroat, well-moneyed men that he was worthy of their confidence. For Arthur, it was a matter of honour.
“I don’t see how anyone wouldn’t want you running their company,” Merlin said.
Arthur laughed humourlessly. “Yes, well, no offence-” A sure sign Arthur was about to say something truly horrifying “-but you and your co-workers wear matching t-shirts. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust your business savvy.”
“It’s a non-profit. And the shirts aren’t mandatory. But you’re missing the point,” Merlin said, trailing after Arthur as he went into his own room and stripped off his pyjama shirt. Without much warning, Merlin’s point made itself scarce, the way Merlin’s points often did when ‘Arthur’ and ‘unexpected nudity’ intersected. Even after months in suffocating proximity, the way Arthur’s skin rippled when the smooth muscles of his back tightened never ceased to make Merlin’s breath catch just a little.
“What is the point then?” Arthur supplied, oblivious as always to the effect he was having on Merlin’s breath and, yes, alright, other parts of his person.
Merlin shook his head. “The point is it’s not always about business, Arthur. The board is going to vote for you because you’re you, and anyone with half a brain can see you were born to run that company.”
Arthur shrugged on a perfectly pressed dress shirt and toed on his shiniest leather wingtips.
“We’ll see,” Arthur said, and sprinted out the door, snatching his briefcase from the kitchen counter along the way.
Merlin sighed and sat down on Arthur’s bed. There was, theoretically, nothing to prevent Merlin from going back to sleep. It wasn’t his life-altering meeting, after all, and just because Arthur’s entire future depended on the events of the next few hours didn’t mean Merlin should lose sleep over it.
Except, of course, that he couldn’t sleep.
Something nervous and uncomfortable bubbled beneath Merlin’s skin as he imagined Arthur walking into that big, echoing board room and trying to convince a bunch of trust-fund babies and stodgy old men of what Merlin already knew: that Arthur was, despite being spoilt and moody and a complete sod at times, the most qualified man on the planet to steer Camelot Investments into the future.
And, judging by the overstuffed folder on Arthur’s bureau, he’d forgotten the quarterly earnings reports he was due to present in just over an hour, each annotated in Arthur’s tight, meticulous scrawl.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding,” Merlin said to no one in particular.
For about three seconds, he wished he could un-see the folder altogether, but then he thought of Arthur, anxious, brave Arthur, with his armour of Anderson & Sheppard suits and his utter inability to admit defeat, charging into the boardroom without his meticulously prepared handouts and-well, obviously Merlin was going to break his skinny neck to keep that from happening. It was what he did, after all, what he’d been doing since twenty minutes after they first met, when Arthur, in his enthusiasm for telling Merlin what a moron he was, failed to notice a bloody crane swinging towards him, and Merlin had thrown him out of the way without thinking. What mattered was that Arthur did courageous, stupid things, and Merlin saved his well-formed arse.
( Part 2 )